ADA
We can help your company or organization achieve ADA Compliance on the web.
ADA compliant websites are important for both user experience and legal requirements.
Over time, lawsuits have been successful against large brands, and law firms are now trolling to find cases. The best defense against lawsuits is AA compliance. Our process begins with running your site through a compliance check. We then come up with a plan and scope of work to address the issues.
Code and Styling edits
We run through a multi-point checklist to address all of the structural and code-related issues.
Many times, this aligns with Technical SEO best practices as well. Structural elements having the proper tags, Headings being structured correctly, and Alt tags for images are all checklist items that will help improve your Google Crawl scores as well.
Compliance vs. Usability
Sometimes the compliance score is a little different from actual real-world ADA usage, so we also work to make sure the website is actually usable by screen-readers and keyboard-only inputs. There are external services for actual user testing if desired.
We recommend that you make an actual commitment to accessibility, rather that simply try to avoid a lawsuit. This means continuously monitoring content changes and additions in your website over time.
The need for ADA compliance
As websites have become more visual and complex, it has become harder for people with disabilities to access them.
Our Process
We have a comprehensive checklist for each area of compliance.
ADA FAQs
Frequent Questions about ADA Compliance
What is the process to become ADA compliant?
- The first step is run a compliance report. These reports are available free via several different tools, but there are also paid alternatives that go much deeper if needed. The minimum cost for paid site reviews is $5k, so we try to base everything off of the available free tools.
- We then create a checklist of actionable items
- If we built the site and currently host it, we’ll use our access to make code edits directly. If we did not build or host the site, we’ll need access to begin.
- We’ll make the edits, and then run the reviews again.
- We’ll do our own testing using keyboard tabbing and voice-over to make sure the site is actually usable from an ADA perspective.
What are the costs involved?
Costs range from $1,500 to $5k and over, depending when the site was built and whether it’s on our codebase or not. Theme builders like Divi, Jupiter or Squarespace/Wix are all more difficult to work with due to their code structure. We’ll know more once we run the initial report.
Given that the minimum cost of a lawsuit is $20k, we feel that it’s a worthwhile investment to bring your website into ADA compliance. There is also a federal tax credit for companies with revenue under 1MM and less that 30 employees. The tax credit covers half of the project cost, up to $10k.
What if I'm using a theme like Divi or Jupiter?
If you are using a theme builder, we’ll need to create a child theme in order to make permanent changes. The process is more difficult based on how these themes are constructed, and we’ll need to monitor future theme updates to make sure the edits do not become broken. Depending on the complexity of your site, you might also consider moving the site code to our flexible, ACF-based theme that is already ADA compliant and optimized for Technical SEO.
How does the ADA compliance process benefit Technical SEO?
Technical SEO covers several of the same data points, such as Headings and structural elements being in the right order. Other things like Alt tags, Aria tags and labels are all covered in Technical SEO and have an affect on your Google scores. If you are interested in doing both at the same time, we can develop a customized plan to address Technical SEO as well.